EDF is hoping the model can be scaled up and brought to other similar locations in the future, she adds.īut the potential for distributed ledger technology to assist the grid as it evolves doesn’t end with distributed generation at the “edge” of the system, Hubbard believes. This, says Hubbard, is a way for people who can’t install their own panels to take part in a decentralised energy economy. One of Electron’s experiments, a collaboration with French energy giant EDF, has brought peer-to-peer electricity to a block of flats in London that sports solar panels, owned by the landlord, on the roof. But what will the microgrid operators do then? Will their customers simply be poached? One day, an expanding national grid will want to connect up these self-powering villages. This is often initially used for lighting and the charging of mobile phones – ubiquitous in Africa.īut Sandwell explains that these microgrids face a daunting prospect. In areas that don’t have any connection at all to their national grid, installing solar panels and a battery can be an easy way to bring a basic amount of electricity to a village, for example. But microgrids are also springing up in developing countries, notably across the African continent says Philip Sandwell, a PhD candidate at Imperial College London who has been studying such projects. “The value of trading energy storage and demand on the same network is incredible,” says Orsini. Users can now experiment with LO3 to get access to electricity from solar-fuelled batteries nearby when needed. One is based in South Australia, where Orsini explains there is already a lot of distributed generation going on – and plenty of grid stability issues. LO3 is now rapidly expanding with a series of other projects around the world. “It’s virtually unhackable,” says founder and chief executive Lawrence Orsini, explaining that tampering with these records is almost impossible because of the fact that everyone has their own, regularly updated copy of the ledger. This means the microgrid’s accounting is decentralised and shared by everyone on the network. To ensure that accurate records of these transactions are kept, LO3 has opted to use blockchain distributed ledger technology. It’s a peer-to-peer network for electricity. People with their own solar panels can sell surplus electricity to their neighbours, for example. Customers signed up to it can choose to power their homes via a range of local renewable energy sources. In fact, that is exactly the model that LO3 Energy has experimented with in its Brooklyn Microgrid project.
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